Niall Ferguson on "Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe"

Watching America

The Times says Niall Ferguson is the “most brilliant British historian of his generation.” He hails from Scotland precisely, and he’s now a U.S. citizen, just like Watching America’s host, Dr. Alan Campbell. In this conversation between the two British Americans, we hear about Ferguson’s latest book, “Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe.” Ferguson claims that all disasters in some sense are man-made, and we’re not getting any better at managing them. In fact, bureaucratic inertia and general incompetence are making things worse. The coronavirus pandemic is discussed alongside the nature of disaster itself, ranging from modern catastrophes in Haiti and Japan, stretching all the way back to Mt. Vesuvius. Niall Ferguson is a senior fellow at Harvard and Stanford, a visiting professor at Tsinghua University, Beijing, and founder and managing director of advisory firm, Greenmantle LLC. He is the author of 16 books. Learn more at niallferguson.com